Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

---

Do you have a dark side?

Or, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so,  join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.

Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday

Share your dark side?

I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.

---

dark | side | thursday | fortythree

The hills were alive with the sound of music.

That much he could remember. That sweet sugar coated music that covered up the horror beneath like a thin plastic caul.

The hills were alive with other sounds too. The howling wind, the ever present droning of the dreary rain, driving down in thick rivulets, from the dark moor above, smearing against the plate glass window.

The sky a thick roiling grey green blanket that stole away his childish hopes.

And the sirens, the sirens and the slamming doors, the curses of the men who searched. Searched in vain. He did not see these things, they were hidden, at least they were supposed to be hidden. Snatched glimpses of flashing lights on the TV screen, stern faced men and so many tears. He heard, he felt those tears. Felt the fear. The fear of the slamming door, the fake smile, the lost ones. The rain, the loss of hope. And, the fear.

He was not supposed to see, or hear, or know about these things. Not to hear the things that had been done to them.

But, he did, of course. They all did. All those who were supposed to be safe. They all knew it was a  lie. They could never be protected by ‘them’ from the dark, the smiles.

Their fake false smiles.

And sugar coated promises.

Perhaps it was the wasp, the wasp in the curtains, that whispered in his sleeping ear. Told him the things he must not know, told him as it prepared to sting.

And then, morning broke again.

He stopped typing.

Remembering all this was pointless. Maybe it explained some of the anger he felt inside, maybe it didn’t. He closed the lid on his Mac, stood and walked to the low white shelf to his right. He picked up his keys, selected one and walked to the glass door, he inserted and turned the key, walked out and closed the door behind him.  He strode along the exposed and rain soaked walkway and, turning left, he began to descend the concrete staircase. Rainwater pooled in the dark places where the staircase turned back on itself. He reached the bottom, the lights were off, broken. Water dripped and he heard the rattling and whispering of the things that lived in the dark, he felt their beady eyes watch as he walked into their domain.  He knew the way.

The room was dark and dank, the smell of days old rubbish, hidden away in plastic skips, rank and fetid. It always made him smile, as he imagined them all, eager faces, transfixed by flickering TV screens, oblivious to the decay and rot that gathered beneath their freshly vacuumed rugs and wood-panelled floors.

He approached the thick base of the chimney. His fingers searching in the dark for that one loose brick.  He found it, slid a finger into the loose mortar.

He pulled out the loose brick. Reached inside.

The box was still there.

---

The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.

fortythree | fiftytwo